Yet another SL fashion blog

Tag Archives: Fashion Week

Mercedes Benz Fashion Week ended Thursday – with more fabulous Spring and Summer 2015 collections than you can imagine. They are all available for viewing at MBFW online. However, my favorite place to see the collections is New York magazine.

Penumbra Fashion Week begins today with many runway shows everyday throughout the week and with forty-three designers, there’s a lot of fashions walking the runways. Second Life® has an immediacy that we do not have in our first lives, so Penumbra Fashion Week features Autumn/Winter 2014 collections.

Now there is a reason I love Second Life Fashion Week. It always produces something new and exciting. Most of the time designers create a few items at a time for a weekly or monthly release schedule. They might release one to five items for an event. There is nothing wrong with this and it is great fun to see how designers take an event theme and interpret it in myriad ways as happens each month at Collabor88.

However, for Fashion Week, they are asked to produce a collection – several pieces that should reflect various forms but with a cohesive theme. This makes them think about design differently – about how elements work together, how shapes can be transformed from one outfit to the next. This different approach can develop into fantastical avant garde pieces, amazing show stopping gowns and really exciting invocations.

There is something about making a gown that you know is going to walk down a runway in front of an audience that I think just gets those juices flowing – so I always am eager to see what folks produce and the stories their fashions tell.

So I am always a bit conflicted about studded clothing. Mainly because I have never worn studded clothing in my life, so I wonder how comfortable it is. Take this dress. I love the way the studs add visual interest, the flat planes of the skirt interrupted by the rows of studs – adding what feels like another dimension to the dress. But then I wonder, what does that feel like to sit on? Is it evenly spread enough so that it’s sort of like the bed of nails phenomenon, or do those little studs poke and prod? Maybe if you sit for just a minute it’s comfortable, but if you sit for a long time it is excruciating? Yeah, I actually spend time wondering what it would feel like for my pixel posterior to sit in my pixel dress with its pixel studs. But hey, it’s a great dress, isn’t it?

One of the reasons I enjoy Fashion Week in real life and Second Life® is the abundance of high fashion designs that are haute, haute, haute. Take the Liana gown from Zanze. There’s nothing practical or sensible about and that is why I love it.Continue reading →

One of the dresses that entranced me at AVENUE Fashion Week was this one from Zanze. It’s called Clarice and features a bodice made of chain mail with intriguing triangle cutouts where the bodice meets the waist of the leather shirt, a scintillating little detail that makes the dress. It is so very fun to see these oh-so-masculine and martial materials being employed in a very feminine form, in a dress that except for that telling detail at the waist, is very traditional in its silhouette.

Diaxm of Ariskea has released such fabulous gowns for both the Spring/Summer and the Fall/Winter AVENUE Fashion Week’s that I am afraid to go to her store for fear I won’t have a single linden left to my name. Not one. This crop top and full length skirt are certainly contenders for my top five outfits of the year. I love the subtle autumnal ombre, the heavy silk fabric, the contrast of form and fabric with the ball gown skirt and the cropped tee that should not work but does. The look exudes confidence and insouciance pleasure in fashion.

Another designer from AVENUE Fall/Winter Fashion Week who was new to me is Ngozi Faith of OZI. She presented a small mini-collection that featured black and white pieces of deceptive simplicity. Her aesthetic is distinctly minimalist, but with a passion for deconstructing. Take this Origami crop top in black. It’s a simple tee with segmented sleeves that make it so much more interesting, but in a simple, clean way – without embellishment. In fact, she achieves by taking away, what most achieve by adding. A neat trick. I have already styled this top in three different outfits – over a lace bodysuit, with a leather pencil skirt and with the eye-catching Curve skirt that she presented it with at Fashion Week.

I went to the Zanze show at AVENUE Fall/Winter Fashion Week and fell in love. I had heard of the designer Zzoiezee, but as the owner of Zenshi, the zen-centric residential and commercial complex and the big club Zenzibar. I had no idea she was a designer as well. That’s the big benefit of Fashion Week, discovering new designers that really speak to your own aesthetic and she does. I will show you more in the coming days, but first I had to share this lush gown with ruffled tiers of autumn leaves. It’s just perfect.

Autumn leaves under frozen souls,
Hungry hands turning soft and old,
My hero cried as we stood out there in the cold,
Like these autumn leaves I don’t have nothing to hold.

Zzoiezee resists the impulse to embellish and knows that extravagance in one place must be balanced by discipline elsewhere, so the bodice is pure simplicity, making way for the exuberant tiers of rich, vibrant autumn color. This can be worn with or without shoes as she provides two alpha options. I chose to wear the lovely python shoes from Kunglers in a deep red.

It’s AVENUE Fall/Winter Fashion Week and the event kicked off with 3 shows yesterday and will continue all week.Check out the calendar here. The fabulous Kungler sisters had their show yesterday. There are some big surprises for long time fans, such as this ultra=metropolitan dress in cream with metal accents. Its shape seems loosely inspired by medieval court jesters with the turned up collar post-modern jester’s collar and the pleated and banded sleeves that are a modern, urbanist reinterpretation of the medieval jester’s sleeves. There’s nothing medieval about this dress, though. It’s as modern as can be.

I added the over-the-knee boots that are still available at Collabor88 for a few days before their release at ISON. I love the buckle above the back of the knee and like how the strap width is similar to the width of the metal straps on the sleeve. These boots come in several colors, each as tasty as this fresh cream.Continue reading →

I can never resist a beautiful feminine and romantic ball gown. I found this one at AVENUE Fashion Week. I missed the show, but saw this in the Retail Gallery. One of the joys of Second Life® is having a closet full of ball gowns. I love how this gown from Arikea combines the soft colors and floral patterns of traditional romantic gowns, but with a thoroughly modern eye. The floral patter is abstract and made even more so by being so very large. The colors are soft and pastel, but not your granny’s pastels – not with that brown.

The gown itself is a traditional shape ball gown shape with a fitted bodice, sweetheart neckline and a full skirt full of drama. The modern edge is totally fabric and color choice. I wanted to emphasize the modern color palette and tinted my white cloves just a slightly darker shade of brown that I pulled from the skirt.

Ariskea made shoes that are a perfect companion to the gown. These shoes come in three colors as does the gown.

I added jewelry from Donna Flora and and an updo from Exile called Part of Me. I love the loft on this undo.

I chose the new PXL skin for Collabor88 called Jade. I love the dramatic makeup.

I am loving the spring/summer collection from MiaMai that was released for AVENUE fashion week. These are great casual pieces and comfy resort wear that suit the season. With romantic florals and flirty hems, the entire collection is full-on feminine. This is the Sagi dress which comes in several print sleeveless asymmetrical dresses worn over a lace system layer blouse.

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